Category Archives: Present Parenting

Count to Ten

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Parenting is not without frustrations. Just the other night I wanted to cry because I was so tired and my poor baby just kept crying and crying. I’ve definitely had more than my fair share of those nights since she was born. I have always had chronic fatigue, so when I don’t get sleep, it really gets to me. In fact, I haven’t slept through the night in over a year now. But anyways, I get so frustrated with her that she won’t just go to sleep. She is literally crying because she is tired but she wont just lie down and close her eyes.

It’s not her fault. Afterall, she is a baby. She is still learning to put herself to sleep. And more than anything, she needs her mom. How can I be mad about that? Whenever I find myself getting angry or frustrated because she won’t cooperate, I take a deep breath and count to 10. Babies can sense your emotions, and she definitely knows when I’m not having it. But my frustration and anger isn’t going to soothe her to sleep anytime soon. So I count to 10, put a smile on my face and rock my baby until she is calm.

It’s okay to feel frustrated, and defeated, and even angry. But remember not to take it out on your baby! I have held her while I cried from lack of sleep, or because I just had no clue how to make her stop crying. Sometimes, on the really rough nights, I put her back in her crib where I know she is safe and walk away for a minute.

Take time to collect yourself. It’s the same idea of put your oxygen mask on first. Help yourself before you can help others. Now I’m not saying go take a long bath and neglect your baby. But it’s okay to take a second to recollect yourself so you can refocus on helping them.

You know what else is okay? Asking for help.

Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without my mother. I have never been more thankful to have her help. She is a morning person and will be awake at 4am every morning naturally, and there were definitely days I would walk downstairs so exhausted from a long night and she will take my daughter for a few hours just so I can get some sleep. I have ALWAYS had a hard time asking for help. I am usually so determined to do things on my own, but raising a child is hard. That’s why they say it takes a village.

Even asking someone to watch her for a few minutes so I could take a hot shower for the first time in a week. The first hot meal I was able to make for myself was like heaven on a plate. I would not have been able to adjust to mom life without the help I was given, or more importantly the help I asked for.

We want to believe we can do it all and be super mom, but after all, we are human and there is no manual in how to raise an infant. So, don’t be afraid to ask for help, count to 10 when you’re at your wits end and you need a reset.

You can do this.

Don’t forget to breathe.

Sharing is not Caring

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There are plenty of rules we try to teach our children. Say “Please” and “Thank You”, eat your vegetables, don’t throw toys at people, no hitting, etc. But there are some rules that we need to be more conscious about teaching. Specifically, I’d like to address sharing. Obviously we want to teach our kids to be kind, and sharing their toys is the kind thing to do. But I don’t necessarily agree that I should be telling my daughter to always share.

I don’t want to teach my daughter that her wants and needs must always come second to that of others.

My daughter is 1 year old right now, so playing with others is mostly just playing alongside others. She doesn’t understand sharing or even playing with another person. Right now her focus is “That’s the toy I want to play with, so I’m going to play with it”. Essentially, this is my need and I’m going to meet it. But someday she will play with a toy and another child will come up and want to play with it too. Do I tell her she has to play with this other child just because it’s what they want? What about what she wants? This is where it’s important to help them make decisions.

Does she want to continue playing with the toy alone? That’s okay. There is nothing wrong with that, and she doesn’t have to share her toy if she doesn’t want to. But would she like to include the other child and play WITH them? Then yes, that is a good time to share.

I want to emphasize to her that sharing is about including other people, but it is HER choice.

It’s really important to me that I teach her to value her choices. I don’t want her to ever feel like her opinion is less important than anyone else’s. Someday she will become a teenager, and it breaks my heart thinking that maybe she would be peer pressured to do something she wasn’t ready for because she told herself that her opinion didn’t matter.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. There are years between for her to learn good decision making. But as a young child, I want her to know that her opinions matter. And we can talk about why she made that decision. So she didn’t want to share her toy. Why? She was playing with it, okay, that’s an okay reason. But on the other side of it, she needs to understand that sometimes other kids won’t share with her for the same reason, and that’s okay too. They may be young, and they may need help making decisions, but we shouldn’t take away that opportunity from them by telling them they HAVE to share. I never want my daughter to second guess her worth because she was always taught she had to put aside her wants to be polite. Being kind to others does not mean being unkind to yourself.